Do you think that if the meth smuggler had been met by two or more officers he would have acted differently?
They didn't even tell the guy to expect a violent reaction. Of course they didn't, because if they had he would have rightly refused.
Here for example is the AP: "Youngblut got out and opened fire on Maland and other officers without warning, the FBI said. Bauckholt tried to draw a gun but was shot, according to the affidavit. At least one border agent fired on Youngblut and Bauckholt, but authorities haven’t specified whose bullets hit whom."
https://apnews.com/article/vermont-border-patrol-shooting-wh...
Have you seen any later reporting that contradicts this?
e.g. the decision makers could be incompetent, they might not care that much, they had some other contradicting information not publicly revealed, etc…
In the case of David Maland, the chance of it being a completely normal "traffic stop" by a federal border patrol agent (who's job is not to fill the counties chest by writing tickets, as you incorrectly state), completely unrelated to these people being under surveillance at the time for being armed and in tactical gear, is dubious to put it mildly.
Was there any indication the police was "sent" to pull them over, rather than some sort of routine traffic stop? The article mentions the DHS surveillance was only "periodic", which implied they weren't really keeping tabs on them 24/7.
It was more than one agent who pulled them over, and it isn't clear they were pulled over as a result of being put under surveillance.
It's a lot more likely that he just didn't know rather than some conspiracy for unknown purposes.
So these guys were being surveilled for being armed and decked out in tactical gear, so the authorities send in a lone traffic cop to pull them over? And predictably, the cop is killed.
This isn't the first time I've heard of this kind of thing happening. That agent was basically set up to die, sacrificed like a pawn by his superiors playing a sick game of chess. The same thing happened to Darian Jarott, who was directed by his boss to arrest an armed and dangerous meth smuggler without being briefed of the danger, despite the fact that the danger was clearly understood by his superiors (a tactical team with medics were stationed nearby, but Jarott was sent in alone without knowledge of this.) The meth smuggler stepped out of his truck with an AR-15, taking Jarott completely by surprise, and murdered him. The meth smuggler was then chased down and killed by the other officers and agents.